Work after Globalization

I get carried away. I do. So when I say this is the greatest book ever about work (in all its forms), you probably need to apply a couple of filters. That said, I’d go one step further. Guy Standing’s new book “Work After Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship” offers us the kind of foundation we need to launch a new social-democratic program. And let’s face it, the old one is long since dead. And starting to get a bit smelly. This review will attempt to summarise the book, but do yourself a favour, don’t take my word for it. You need to read this book for yourself. We’ve even arranged a 35% discount for you. Click here for details. And no, we aren’t taking a cut!  

 

Organizing: The Arts and Sciences

Organizing, yes, but for what? Network member, author, organizer, activist, and historian  Richard Moser presents an intriguing summary of the current state of work and unionism in the U.S.. He argues that unions have tended towards an organizational culture which is resistant to change and unaccustomed to democracy. He traces the evolution of this process, mapping it against changes in work and society. Unions must develop a culture of organizing if they are to renew their influence and reconnect with their members. He then presents some recommendations on organizing, exploring the contradictory but creative tensions that animate union activity. These are the challenges faced by those who want to put the movement back into labor.

 

Precariat meet’n'greet

The New Unionists of the late 19th century built trade unions as we know them by organizing the proletariat – the working class of the day. Similarly, today’s new unionists are beginning to organize the precariat – workers without security. To say this latter group represents the most rapidly growing sector in society entirely misses the point. The labour force has fundamentally changed. And according to many labour analysts, the real jolt is still to come:

“Most of the full-time jobs lost in this recession won’t come back. Most of the employees laid off in the past year won’t find permanent work. When the statistics catch up to the reality, people will be forced to confront the new normal.” [i]

 

SideWiki: A game changer from Google?

Google’s SideWiki is a great new tool which allows you (yes, you) to add your thoughts to somebody else’s website. Your comments can then be viewed by anybody who has the Google toolbar, ie tens of millions of people, and rising fast. We’ve tested it by adding comments to Wal-Mart, Wikipedia and BBC news pages. There’s also one on this page; you’ll see a little tab symbol top left of the screen if you have the toolbar installed. Although there were a few delays before some of our comments appeared, they all got there in the end. One can just imagine some of the uses this technology will have, particularly where people’s patience has been eroded by spin doctors hiding the truth regarding abuses of corporate social responsibility. In effect, we suddenly have the ability to slip a leaflet into the company’s annual report.

 

Call-centre labour in a global economy

Network member Richy Leitch reviews the latest publication in the excellent ‘Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation‘ series, edited by Ursula Huws. The book can be bought here, and chapter abstracts are available here.

“Call-centre labour in a global economy” takes up a theme broached in earlier volumes: the emergence of the call centre as a new form of work organisation. In her introductory essay, editor Ursula Huws points out the complex and multifaceted nature of call centre employment. As a form of work, it has many features of Taylorism:  routine, highly monitored and scripted procedures undertaken to tight deadlines. However call centre work now covers a wide variety of situations – from routine selling and information provision, to specialised medical and IT expertise, and skilled public sector services (undergoing the process of ‘callcenterisation’). This breadth is creating some significant theoretical and political problems for the left, according to Huws. Where are we to place call-centre workers in technical and social hierarchies? How do occupational identities coalesce in such transient forms of employment? How can we build collective organisation?

This book (Merlin Press, 2009) addresses a number of issues confronting those who labour within the “post-industrial sweatshop” – from the particular dynamics of its labour processes to larger issues regarding the process of globalisation and wider social divisions, especially those of gender – in an effort to comprehend the specificities of the call centre phenomenon.

 

Meltdown: the end of the age of greed

For many trade unionists the financial events of the last year have been troublesome, to say the least. What has been going on to create such economic turmoil: massive job loss, bankruptcies, credit freezes and incredible amounts of debt and bailout funds? Moral condemnation is easy – and certainly justifiable. But what lies beyond this – in the realms of analysis and political response? Paul Mason’s Meltdown: the end of the age of greed (2009) provides one answer, in its attempt to relate the spectacular economic events of autumn 2008 to long–term economic and political trends within contemporary capitalism.

 

One big union in Denmark?

“The best strategy for the trade union movement would be to concentrate our energies into one single union.” With these words Poul Erik Skov Christensen, general secretary of Denmark’s largest union*, has launched a radical proposal for union reform. “Let us start a debate on the development of the trade union movement. It is my vision that we, in the coming years, should work towards amalgamating the Danish LO-affiliated unions into one large single union…” Below is a translation from Christensen’s article in the Danish newspaper “Politiken”. 

 

Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice

Richard Leitch reviews “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice“  by Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin  (University of California Press, 2008).

There are a number of books examining the crisis of trade unionism in USA. Fletcher and Gapasin’s account takes the recent 2005 split within the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) as its starting point, then works back to expose the split’s fundamental structural and ideological roots, before charting an alternative, “ a different theory and practice of trade unionism” which they call ‘social justice unionism’ (SJU).

Their core argument is that the ‘New Voice’ – ‘Change to Win’ dispute has achieved very little, failing to address the challenges confronting US labour and the long-standing limitations of ‘business unionism’. To do so requires a radical break with existing approaches, tackling the issues of globalisation, the constituency for modern trade unionism, and of the union role in processes of social change.

 

No regulation without representation

To what extent does the struggle for workplace democracy overlap with the struggle for human rights? In this interview we speak with Roy Adams*, one of the world’s leading figures in the field of labour rights, former professor of industrial relations, founding member and chair of the Society for the Promotion of Human Rights in Employment, and member of the International Labour Rights Commission.

1] How do you see the outlook for workers and their unions today? Do you think the current crisis will have a major impact?

My concern has always been with the broad phenomenon of labour rights as human rights. It’s a concern that was relevant prior to the current crisis, and will be relevant long after the crisis is no more than a memory. In short,

*  Labour rights are human rights
* Human rights are universal and indivisible
* Human rights are non-hierarchical – each is equally sacred and deserves to be treated with equal reverence
* Collective bargaining is a human right
* The right to refrain from bargaining is as bogus as the right to enslave oneself, or the right of minorities to freely choose a racist society
* We need to be concerned about the rights not only of workers in countries with poorly developed democratic political systems but also about the rights of workers in countries that are widely acclaimed to be advanced political democracies such as Canada, the US and Britain where labour rights violations are all too common.

 

Multinationals and the commodification of public sector work

Combining national case studies and comparative work, “The New Gold Rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work” examines the transformations involved for capital, labour, trade unions and service delivery in the drive towards public sector privatisation.

Editor Ursula Huws, in her introduction to the book, points out that the new public services industry comprises: “the very operations of our own government – the inner workings of the democratic machine and the services that citizens expect to receive” (p2);  ie health care, education, social security, and environmental protection, as well as all the associated information, communication and facilities support. This has all become a gold mine for capital, open to penetration by multinationals and powerful new corporations. Central to the shift is the transformation of public services into standard replicable commodities, with their labour power effectively ‘recommodified’.

Analysts on the left typically consider privatisation in all its various forms – commercialisation of public organisations, joint ventures, full private ownership – as capital’s gain and labour’s loss. This collection provides plenty of evidence to support that understanding.